Does it have a floopy drive ?

Otherwise, it is theoretically possible to boot off the network, but the BIOS needs to support that and all. Check whether there is an option like that in the BIOS setup (usually invoked by pressing DEL early in the boot process) and if yes, the motherboard make would be useful, I believe.

The last resort, I suppose, would be to hook a CD drive to it, even if temporarily (from another computer) just to install and then remove it and update the installed OS from the net.

It does support IDE drives, right?

dont have exact specs yet. can get some approx spec from thinkwiki. fyi its a thinkpad laptop 700ed i will post exact specs when it arrives. yeah it supports ide. So, there is no way to do somekind of virtual w/o os w/o cd install. is there a way to use the network connection to send the files to the hard drive? or can i switch hard drives with another laptop load it onto that hard drive and then switch the hard drive back into the original machine? or in simplier terms a hard drive swap with a laptop w/ a working cd drive.

It's probably easiest to choose a distribution that can boot the installer from a floppy, and can download the packages from the net (you don't want to install everything from floppies...). I think debian would be a good choice.

what packages would i need to add? I am schooled on ubuntu so things were done for me. Is there a package that will add all essentials? Update manager maybe?

I think apt-get install gdm xfce4 synaptic should give you a system you'll be able to use.